Snapple ads get 'edge'

Cadbury Schweppes' Snapple Beverage Group is ratcheting up the quirky quotient in its marketing to reach younger consumers.

Ads, promotions and other marketing efforts for Snapple this year will hone in on the 18- to 24-year-old set. Past efforts have targeted people in their 30s and 40s, said Steve Jarmon, Snapple's VP-communications. But he said the new work will appeal to longtime consumers, too.

"We think we could be doing a better job of talking to younger people," he said. "We know kids are active participants in this market, and we want to make sure we're reaching them and that we're very much top of mind when they go to make decisions at the [convenience-store] cold box."

Snapple indicated it would spend as much as $33 million on the marketing effort, which begins April 4 on cable stations such as MTV, ESPN and the Cartoon Network. Spot buys will follow at the end of the month. Snapple, which has a 17% share of the total juice-drink market, according to Beverage Digest, will use the fruit characters from last year's ads, but the new executions have cagey references to sex (via fruit combinations) and an overt mention of jail (where bad fruit end up).

"We kind of edged it up just a bit more," said Cheryl van Ooyen, group creative director on the account at Interpublic Group of Cos.' Deutsch, New York.

A new radio campaign begins May 1. Snapple also will run an under-the-cap promotion, and its fruit characters will appear this summer in high-traffic areas and stores.

"Rather than something for TV, something for point-of-sale, something for the trades, I believe we are doing a really tight job of integrating so that we're very consistent in our message," Mr. Jarmon said. "When we're talking about advertising [and] promotions, we have some kind of synergy."

Last year, the company spent $8.9 million in measured media for the Snapple brand, according to Taylor Nelson Sofres' CMR.

Two new :30s with the fruit characters, which launched in 1999, will run along with two 15-second spots-one truncated from last year and one from this year's flight. The longtime "Made from the best stuff on earth" tag remains in this first effort under Cadbury Schweppes, which bought the company for $1.45 billion in October. Snapple is the country's third-largest non-carbonated beverage company behind PepsiCo and Coca-Cola Co. Deutsch parent Interpublic was named global "creative consultant" for Coca-Cola Co. in December.